EASE - Yee Xing or Yee Ge
By Shen Qibin
Throughout history, scholars and poets have expressed their unrestrained sentiments and lofty aspirations, reaching for the bright moon in the blue sky. Throughout history, both at home and abroad, many artists have also been filled with a sense of detachment and a pursuit of freedom and ideals. Zhou Shichao has also always been immersed in his own artistic world and has been adept at navigating the art field with ease.
I named his solo exhibition "Yi", which is a coincidence of fate. Yi, in Chinese, is a level 1 standard Chinese character with more meaning. Its form is composed of 辵 and rabbit. According to the idea that rabbits are good at running, its original meaning is to escape. From this, it is extended to mean scattering and losing, then to going beyond the scope, and then to express leisure and happiness, until it means being extraordinary and outstanding. The continuous extension and transformation of a Chinese character, from the concrete to the metaphysical, from the simple to the refined and then to the extraordinary, is truly full of endless meaning.
Zhou Shichao's solo exhibition "Yi" this time reflects the distance between his inner self and the real world. He maintains a delicate relationship between art and reality, and also reflects the state of freedom, restraint, calmness and transcendence he pursues in his heart. He is obsessed with the language of art itself, yet constantly attempts to transcend it. Constrained by his own language habits and experiences, he always wants to extricate himself from it. Therefore, he repeatedly plays with life in an artistic way among tones, scales, artistic conceptions, and language. Even his installation works are a three-dimensional presentation of this language. He can achieve the subtlety and precision of the language, purely attaining a refreshing visual enjoyment and aesthetic experience. However, due to their excessive completeness, they lose a kind of capricious and mischievous tension.
In the communication with Shi Chao, one can sense the energy deep in his heart and the burst of this energy that is about to burst forth. This exhibition is also a co-conspirator and accomplice for us in art. My pressure on the artist is somewhat subjective and even dictatorial, yet what he offers is surprise and amazement. He began to attempt to combine the discarded materials in reality with painting, breaking the inherent aesthetic and inertia in language, hiding the semantics and concepts contained in the materials themselves, and creating tension in a brand-new language dimension, bringing a brand-new paradigm and possibility to his artistic creation.
His large-scale installation work "Insomnia" is an outburst of conceptual language. Amidst the exuberance, it retains the purity of language; in the erosion, it implies the restraint that has been distorted and alienated; and in the indulgence of sensibility, it constantly tights the balance of rationality. This is his consistent way of being a person, doing things and doing art. This is also his inner charming temperament, and he himself is intoxicated by it. At the same time, it is also the limit he has set for himself. He is constantly trying to break through this boundary. Therefore, his creations are filled with such desire and passion, full of vitality and possibilities.
"Those who leisurely contemplate the way of the king have an extraordinary demeanor that sets them apart from the rest of the world." We look forward to his art constantly surpassing itself and truly reaching the realm of elegance and refinement. (End）
